


the second to the last

by hariboo



Category: Lost
Genre: Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-13
Updated: 2011-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:15:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/183875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hariboo/pseuds/hariboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Juliet’s last moments don’t have her life flashing before her eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the second to the last

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this way way way back after the s5 finale, then didn’t love, then s6 happened and as it did I changed the ending a bit. Unbetaed.

  
Her hips ache from the chain that is getting tighter and tighter around her like a snake coiling around its prey and all of her attention is on gripping James’ hand, sweaty and slipping in hers, and holding on. She can hear Kate just of to the side as she says something but Juliet’s attention is entirely on James and his eyes. He’s yelling at her to stay and she hopes he knows how much she wants to. Their combined sweat is making it harder to keep her grip. The chain is getting tighter on her hips pulling her away and down. The sound of metal bending in unnatural ways is flooding her senses and all she feel is the sweat between her and James’ fingers.

He’s yelling at her to not let go. Ordering her to stay with him.

She wants to. He has no idea how much she wants to stay.

He calls her Blondie.

She smiles. She smiles at the nickname. She smiles at his face—still bloody from what Phil, Jack, and others have done to him today, his hair is falling around his face, and she wants to tell him to make sure his cuts don’t get infected. She smiles and feels the world start to unravel around her. The chain is digging to her hipbones painfully, her bones feels like cracking glass under it’s pressure, and she can feel the bruises already start to form. The metal is breaking above, just over James’ head, and she smiles because there’s nothing left to do.

She tells him what he already knows, but people never say I love you enough and really mean it.

He screams and their fingers slip away. She feels as his fingers tips brush against her wrist before there is nothing but air and metal around her.

The chain pulls her down, fast. Tugged down by the force of the electromagnetic pocket, and Juliet remembers:

This is not the first time she’s been pulled towards death.

—

She was six when she almost died the first time. It had been in the pool at her house. Rachel had been too busy with her friends to notice her little sister walking around too close to the edge of the pool, and her parents had been inside preparing the birthday cake. Even at six Juliet knew better than to jump in the deep end without her floaties so she was being careful when their dog ran past her, startling her.

She slipped on the edge and fell in with a minor splash that was lost in the sound of the party and people.

The water surrounded her. Swallowed her like a bright blue void, and her voice was lost in the clean and gross taste of chlorine. Her hands reached up and felt only more water. Her legs kicked, but she felt stuck in the blue. She had the brief and scary thought she was going to die in her pool. At six death had always been an vauge concept something she knew happened to their old dog and Mommy’s dad, until this very moment where she understood what it really meant; the absence of breath and a void around her.

Still, she didn’t stop kicking even as the thought filled her head.

She kicked and reached with her tiny hands, until, finally, after what felt like years her fingers brushed manage to the edge. It was slippery and wet, but her fingers latched on like talons, knuckles turning white as she gripped the tiles.

With her face above the water, she coughed, sputtered, but did not yell out. She looked behind her where Rachel and her friends were still playing and where she could see her mom and dad just in the shadow of the kitchen. Realising, in a very six year old way that she survived something, Juliet felt a relief that she had never experienced before. A rush came over her and she let a few tears slip out before, gripping the edge of the pool and sliding, her small legs treading water carefully, to where the step ladder was.

When her fingers touched the sun soaked metal, she scrambled as far from the pool’s edge as quickly as possible, falling to the grass on her hands and knees. Their dog came up to her and licked her face as if she sensed her tiny mistress’ fear. Juliet pushed the dog’s tongue from her face, but hugged the warm, furry body. She sat there, on the edge of the blue water, watching her sister and her friend’s splash around for minutes until her mother called them in.

It snapped her out of the trance she had been in, staring at the water, and Juliet carefully, slowly, padded away across the yard to her mother’s arms.

As her mom wrapped her up in a towel and picked her up, taking her back to the kitchen, Juliet thought about telling her. She didn’t though. She never would tell anyone. No reason behind it; but it became an experience that was wholly hers. (Plus, she didn’t want to get yelled at for not being careful.)

It was the first time she had been scared of the water. It had also been the last, because she survived it. Swimming held no fear after and she later in life became the captain of her school’s swim team.

She would always remember the experience as the first time she had been aware of death as something more than an abstract thought that she heard about in church. However it would most definitely not be the last she would be aware of her mortality—there will be an island and a lot of blue water someday— but she survives all the other moments too.

Until she won’t survive anymore.

(There will be an island and a hatch someday.)

—

Pain blooms across her chest and travel up to her head, spreading at her shoulder and down to her arms. Juliet blinks awake, tasting blood in her mouth. Everything hurts and she’s sure she has severe internal injuries. She wants to scream out—tell James she’s alive—but she can barely turn her body.

It’s all has gone to hell. Jack’s plan. She should have never brought them back—they could have been on the sub floating away from this island after all these years. She’s never left, always tethered to this place. Biting back a sob, she turns and her eyes fall to the bomb. It’s there, still intact, and like that Juliet realises that she can still makes this horrible plan work.

If she could just…

Getting to the bomb is painful and her body protests every movement. The dirt scraps against her skin and mixes with her blood; she can still feel the chain dragging behind her, coiled loosely now around her waist. Her fingers curl over a rock and her eyes focus on the metal canister.

It’s the only way; the only way to make everything better.

Crying out she slams the rock on the bomb.

“Come on,” she grits out, sobs caught in her throat. “ _C’mon_.”

The canister doesn’t even budge. It lays there under all the metal and dirt like curse. This whole island is a curse and she will stop it from infecting everybody she knows and cares about even more than it already has. Tightening her grip on the rock to the point of where she can feel its edges cutting into her skin, she lifts her arm as high and brings down it down as fast and hard as she can.

A white flash blinds her and the world splits.

—

 _Her fingers brush against a candy bar as she kneels in front of a vending machine and she can feel his hands at her wrist._

Her eyes open again and she feels blood under her fingernails.


End file.
